I really should know this, but I never really “groked” the concepts as they interrelate.
Thanks for taking the time.
In: 12
The refresh rate is how often the monitor/screen is capable of changing what it displays. That’s measured in Hertz, which is “number of times per second.” So if your monitor has a 60 Hz refresh rate, it is capable of changing 60 times per second.
The frame rate is how often your graphics card or processor are able to create a new image and send it to the screen. If you computer slows down because other processes are running or it’s overheating, the frame rate will decrease.
The key issue is how these interact. If the refresh rate is much higher than the frame rate, then the monitor is sitting displaying a static image and waiting for a new frame to display. If the frame rate is much higher than the refresh rate, the graphics card is sending video data to be displayed but the monitor is too slow to display it and is dropping frames, giving a potentially jerky appearance and wasted effort on the computing side.
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